I’m a college freshman and this time last year I was faced with a difficult choice of going to a private college with a hefty price tag or a state university that would cost considerably less. My senior year I was all but convinced that I had found my home for the next four years, my dream school, which was a highly praised, well known school with state of the art facilities and a beautiful campus in the heart of Boston. A place where I would live, make my friends for life, and chase my dreams in city full of opportunities.
But there’s a drawback to having the “best of the best” and learning in a place that has churned out famous great minds and persons. That reputation and those facilities make the education ridiculously pricey.
To break down exactly why I'm glad I chose the cheaper option, I’m going to take the safe bet that most college students have ordered Chinese takeout at least once before. And if you haven't, pretend for the sake of this analogy. At a glance, comparing a public university to a private college could seem like comparing Chinese takeout to eating Asian cuisine in a very nice restaurant.
At first glance, there seems to be not much in common, but when you look closer you may spot more similarities than one would think. You may choose to eat out in a nice restaurant where waiters bring your food wearing white gloves, or maybe you will get your food in a college dorm room, where your friend opens the brown bag and hands you your box of lo mein. In either case, the important part is not where you eat, but the choices you make there.
In other words; the real difference matters not where you eat but what you eat and how. How much food are you going to order in that restaurant? A three-course meal and maybe a couple of drinks? If you don’t withhold from the crab rangoons, and the hot noodles, and you also can’t resist finishing the entire cheesecake, you're not going to feel good afterwards. No matter how delicious it was when you were eating it, now you’re stuffed and just feel greasy. Likewise, if you chow down on your entire chow mein from the takeout box in your dorm room without ever looking away from the movie, you’re going to feel equally uncomfortable once done eating.
How this relates to college is that the decisions you make in whichever school you pick matters a lot. It can matter more than which school you chose. If you go to a school with a great reputation and brand new facilities but make poor decisions there, the money you spend on that education may be wasted in the end. Working your hardest to achieve your goals will have a bigger impact on your future than the name of the school you graduate from.
So, whether you spent $15 or $55 for that meal - the investment you make in your future (digestion-wise with the food, or debt-wise with your education) is more important than the tablecloths/white gloves or the newness of the buildings your school owns. Sometimes you get what you put into something and appearances are just for display.
